Book Reviews: Coming Soon!

I have decided since one of my greatest passions is books, I am going to do a series of book reviews. My purpose is two-fold, it is not only to review books in the traditional sense (my thoughts and feelings about them), but also to give them a rating (as in G, PG, R, etc.). I just did a brief search to see if anyone else is doing this and there are a few sites, but when I went to them and tried to search for some popular books, they didn't show up.

I wish to give these ratings so people have a better idea of what they are getting into. Books are a little more tricky than movies because how bad, scary, etc. a book is partly depends on the reader's imagination. For instance, I have a very good imagination so, based solely on my imaginings, I would be tempted to give Lord of the Rings an R for terror (those Nazguls are pretty terrifying) and also an R to the Hunger Games trilogy for brutality (my imagination can do a lot with the description of the genetically modified dogs and what they did to the tributes). But my imagination is not everyone's imagination, so I would actually rate each of those as PG-13. Also, as someone recently pointed out to me, in books you can skim/jump over unpleasant and bad sections. Some of us are better at this than others and, if you are good at it, you can act as your own content filter.

I know some people will very much disagree with this, but with movies I sometimes allow them to have “redeeming factors.” As an example, The Royal Tenenbaums has a lot of bad stuff, but is one of my very favorite movies because, in terms of cinematography, it is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. Also, even though Gladiator is a very brutal movie, I still really like it because it is a great story, very well made, and the acting is superb. In the same way, I will try to convey the redeeming factors of books, or share when I do not think they really have any.

In the future I will try and rate books as I read them so as to have individual book reviews and fresh impressions, but some of my first reviews are going to lump a few books from series together.

Oh, I suppose I should share, though I have read and enjoyed many classics (the unabridged Les Mes., Hunchback of Notre Dame, Jane Erye, some Jane Austen books, The Foundation series, most of the Dune Series, etc.), I am unashamed to admit I have read the Twilight series twice and enjoyed it both times. I'm not saying they are quality literature, or that they are not cheesy, and slightly ridiculous, but I thought they were entertaining and good escapism books. Anyway, that's a warning that some types of people should probably read my reviews with a grain of salt.

With all of that said, I will go for now. I hope you all have a wonderful day.

Note: In my "rating" the various books, I will follow similar guidelines to those put forth by the Motion Picture Association of America, to review those guidelines, you can click the link below.
What Each Rating Means